Home Wiki:Links to commercial sites
As part of the Terms of Use for Wikia, when you use this site you agree "not to use the Service to" ... "Post, upload, transmit, share, or store unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, solicitations, "spam", or any other type of unauthorized solicitation". Since this wiki is about homes, it is ok to post links to commercial Web sites with information about or supplies or services that may be useful for our homes. But, it is not ok to create articles that are just ads. The articles you create need to contribute to the content of the wiki. Please don't create pages that are just links to commercial sites. Any pages like that will probably be deleted. It's ok to create a page on a topic and then link to relevant commercial sites, but please see the guidelines below to ensure your article will be considered an acceptable contribution. Commercial sites By commercial site this page means sites about or for companies about their products or services -- the things they sell. User page Each registered user has their own user page. It's ok to put your favorite sites or sources on your user page. If your professional expertise is relevant to homes, it's ok to tell about your expertise and why you think a particular company (maybe the one you own or where you work) is great. Your user page is a good place for expressing your personal preferences and opinions. Links on article pages Some articles list companies that supply materials or services. These are usually under the section for "External links". If an article has a link to a commercial company, you may not remove links to competitors just to make one company more prominent. (You can remove them for normal reasons -- because they don't work any longer or because they no longer sell that item or service.) It is not ok to link them with a label that makes it look like they are the source of information on a generic item. So, a link labeled "chair" could not link to a commercial site, it should link to the article on the Home Wiki about chairs. It would be ok to put the link to company ABC's chairs under the external links section. Or even to have a link to company ABC's chairs if you are talking about a new kind of chair or a chair that company ABC developed. You could have information about the article about the new kind of chair that ABC developed with a link to ABC or ABC's chairs there. Articles or pages about commercial sites Right now we don't have any pages about a company. It's possible that in the future someone will write an article about a company that fits into this wiki. The critical thing is that the article fit into this wiki. It needs to have links to other articles in this wiki. An article about a trend setting architectural firm could link to articles about that trend. (And an article about the trend or famous architects in that firm could also link to the article about the architectural firm.) The article should also link to other contrasting or related styles. In addition to links to and from other, related articles, an article about a company, could have links to its official Web site and also to competitors. The key thing is that an article about a particular company or service cannot be just an advertisement (ad) for that company. It must contribute to the over purpose of this wiki to help people with information about and for their homes. If you have an opinion about a company, it's important that you make it clear when you're stating that opinion that it's from you (put it on your user page or discuss it on the talk page with your signature). If you want to say it was ranked high on a consumer poll or by another organization, give the reference. Examples of acceptable article links to commercial sites For example, an article about company XYZ that just has links to XYZ will be deleted. But, an article about a household item could have a link to company XYZ as a source for that household item. Or if company XYZ creates many useful household items, there could be an article about company XYZ with links to articles about those kinds of household items and/or information about inventions, improvements or patents XYZ holds. It is similar to an article about an architect who is well known for designing buildings with a particular style, the article about the architect should link to the article about the style and the style article can link to the architects that helped create or are well known for using that style. In another example, the Lane company helped popularize hope chests in the U.S. for decades in the 1900s. So, the hope chest article has a link to Lane's site, but it also has a link to another commercial company that a user of this site liked. Listing multiple commercial companies, so the article is less biased, is a good idea. (It's ok to give a biased opinion on your user page, but try to have a broader, less biased point of view in the articles.) Another case where a link to a commercial site is good is when that site has useful information about homes, homecare or other things that fit into this wiki. So, a site that sells sinks which has information about how to fix a clog would be a reasonable link on the sink page and on a page about how to unclog a drain. Repeated links to the same site There are cases where more than one page appropriately links to the same site, especially to different content on that site. For instance, a large department store that sells many different home furnishings and kinds of furniture might have links on a few different pages. In general each of those links should go directly to the relevant sections of that store's Web site. And it is not appropriate to link to that company from every page about something the company sells. In general the links would belong on only a couple of pages, perhaps the broader category, such as "furniture" or perhaps in an article about items that the company is particularly known for or which are difficult to find elsewhere. Repeated links to the same site may be deleted. This is especially true for commercial sites, but could also apply to too many links to any site. Exceptions are made for sites like About.com or WikiHow where there are thousands of different articles that are relevant to the topics on this wiki. Related Home Wiki:Terms of Use